


soft as thunder

by Official_Biscuit_Moron



Category: Gintama
Genre: Butterflies, Gen, POV Second Person, Shouka Sonjuku, butterfly boy, small baby joui, takasugi's emo reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26765563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Official_Biscuit_Moron/pseuds/Official_Biscuit_Moron
Summary: It's a quiet night.
Relationships: Takasugi Shinsuke & Sakata Gintoki & Katsura Kotarou, Takasugi Shinsuke & Yoshida Shouyou
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	soft as thunder

**Author's Note:**

> _For you are not beside, but within me ___  
> -the 1975, "Loving Someone"

It’s a quiet night.

The moon glows silver behind silver clouds, floods into the river in a bright, pale streak. Softly, dewily shining. 

Your feet were sore and weary—Sensei let you and Gintoki and Zura run around all day today, trying to catch butterflies. Zura couldn’t catch any, since every butterfly he met didn’t want to cuddle with him as much as he wanted to cuddle with it, so he only went around whining and chasing Gintoki to look at his; Gintoki had only caught one. Bright, fiery yellow-orange, with little dark dots and ends dipped in chocolate. A sunflower in blossom. 

You caught three, not one or none, and reminded Zura and Gintoki of that all day, to Zura’s indignation and Gintoki’s irritation. 

(You might’ve caught more, if Gintoki had stopped pouncing on your net and knocking it to the ground, or if Zura had stopped popping up suddenly behind you whenever you tried to sneak up on a particularly elusive one.) 

The first butterfly you caught was a pale, bluish one, moonlight-colored and webbed with slim brown lines; the next was a dim, warm brown, glossy-winged, catching green in the sunlight; the last, another orange one. Matching Gintoki’s.

Sensei told you all the names of the butterflies, pointing at each one that would flutter past, and laughing when his hair would flutter into his eyes, and speaking in his gentle voice. They were too long and too many for you or Gintoki to remember, but Zura soaked up the information eagerly. 

(Unfortunately, the butterflies were no less endeared to him when he addressed them by name than they were when he didn’t.) 

Gintoki laughed and called Zura weird butterfly names for an hour, because it turns out he did remember some of them, which left you feeling impressed and jealous and foolish; kindly, Sensei told you again, because that’s the kind of thing Sensei did. You only remembered one.

(Sensei bought you all little treats about a month ago, after he went into town for groceries, and Gintoki hadn't stopped talking of them since. He had received two sticks of strawberry-flavored gum, which Sensei said to ration carefully—Gintoki was curious as to what 'strawberry' tasted like, so, when Sensei handed them to him, he immediately put both in his mouth and chewed them very thoroughly. That occupied him for several minutes, during which time Sensei sighed and shook his head and smiled and handed Zura a pretty dark green string, for tying up his hair, then handed you a little cloth bag, which he said you could do whatever you wanted with. Looking at his smile, you thought maybe he didn't know what to get you. But that was okay, because you and Gintoki and Zura were smiling, too. And he'd gotten something for you anyway. He'd thought of you.

But that was hard to think about when Gintoki was screaming because Zura was trying to teach him to blow bubbles and he'd accidentally spat out the wad of gum into the grass. Luckily, Sensei had another stick. Admiration overcame you—it was amazing how Sensei was always prepared to deal with Gintoki's idiocy.)

Strawberry the orange butterfly flew off long ago—though not before becoming briefly and confusingly tangled in Zura’s hair—up and out of the net held loosely, carefully in Gintoki’s small, coarse hands. The sacrifice of Zura’s ponytail to the cause of liberating Strawberry led to more name-calling, and then to Zura and Sensei having to work together to put it back up, like it was an important monument or something. And then Gintoki tried to help, even though his definition of helping was just yelling encouragement at Sensei. And then he kept nagging you to “free Strawberry’s twin”, even though you had already freed the bluish one and the brown one.

(So that your net would be empty to hold the butterfly matching his.) 

You thought it was dumb that you had to let them go.

Zura, freshly re-ponytailed, thought it made perfect sense to let them go.

Gintoki thought it was dumb that you looked so dumb all the time. You thought it was kind of painful when your foot collided with his leg, but relished in the fact that it looked even more painful for him.

But Sensei overheard your conversation with the other two. 

And he smiled. In a weird sort of way. 

And he said, after reprimanding you and Gintoki for fighting, “Maybe it’s better to let them go, Shinsuke.”

You nodded, then nodded some more, even though he wasn’t done, embarrassment blazing over your cheeks in a ruddy red haze.

“Better that,” Sensei continued, “than to stifle them by holding them too close.”

You agreed fervently and glared at Gintoki’s smirk out of the corner of your eye until you were sure he’d burst into bright, fiery, yellow-orange flames, until all he would’ve been was a speck of dark ash floating into the sky.

A breeze bustles past the window.

It’s open, a little bit, because you opened it to see into the river, and the warm lights that sometimes break into that glassy stripe of moonlight. Lanterns, glowing paper and fiery orange. Rippling. Falling into the water and blossoming.

In the darkness and the quiet, it’s easier to remember what Sensei’s smile had looked like. When colors were muted and voices were soft, and everything was bathed in the light of a midday sun, and there was none of this burning in your throat or in your chest. 

It has been a long time since you’ve thought of things like this.

 _Better not to dwell on it,_ you think, and tap the ash out of your pipe. It falls soundlessly into the river, blends seamlessly into the current; away, away, it rushes, never to be seen again.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! title is part of a lyric of "I Dreamed a Dream" from les mis
> 
> (p.s. takasugi uses the little bag to hold his weed)
> 
> (here's a petition to sign to support blm! http://chng.it/PdLMzxdm9Z)


End file.
